


Questions Better Left Unanswered

by komikbookgeek



Category: The Tomorrow People (2013)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Pre-Series, tw: death, tw: sex trafficking, tw: torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6130690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/komikbookgeek/pseuds/komikbookgeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roger Price reads police files, which are the answers to some questions he's had about John Young. In retrospect, he'd rather not have them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Questions Better Left Unanswered

There was an envelope on his desk. It certainly hadn't been there when he'd left that afternoon, and since his office was locked, the number of who both could have accessed his office and would have dared to do so was small. It was turned facedown, but was a plain, boring almost, interoffice mail envelope. Brand new and still crisp. Nothing written on it. The red tie string had been removed and it was sealed shut. Roger levitated it carefully - it didn't feel heavy and didn't seem hollow. It was the post-it note that dragged his paranoia down. Dark grey and written on with darker blue ink. Roger hated Jed's memopads, they were difficult to read. It was why his brother used them, he knew. Didn't matter, he knew what it said. Don't share. Destroy when finished. He picked up a small blade and cut a slit int he flap. Two files inside, on fairly thin, one thick. The envelope was carefully tucked inside his jacket and he pulled his thermos from his drawer, to fill it at one of the communal coffee pots. Then he teleported out of Ultra, to a roof were he had built a 'nest' more in line with a _Spider-Man_ comic book than New York - a hammock chair strung up in an impossible to reach place, a sleeping bag open inside it and pinned in place, a camp stove on it's little tripod legs on a ledge with a tin of waterproof matches inside. The stone some feet above was stained with soot from smoke. There was a piece of wire hanging with binder clips wrapped in the wire for hanging things.

Roger settled into his chair, removed the files and clipped them to the wire. The envelope was ripped in half, then in half again, and he pulled the matches out and started them burning inside the pot while he opened the thinnest file. There was a Polaroid paperclipped to the inner side on the upper left. He placed the paperclip in the tin with matches and looked at the photograph. The woman inside was dead. _Mercifully dead_ , Roger thought. It was difficult to tell what she looked like. The picture was put on a clip. He turned his attention towards the papers inside. It was brief. A police report. An autopsy report. A release of body form. The police report first. An anonymous phone call from a pay phone - dialed to 911 had reported a body in the quarry, at the bottom of a service road used to off load gravel, and hung up. The operator reported the voice sounded muffled, like the person was talking through something and trying to alter their voice. They couldn't tell if the voice was male or female. Jane Doe, she'd been dubbed. Approximately 30 years old. She'd been found nude, beaten, bloodied. A section of her hair had been ripped out. Her teeth were broken - probably beaten out of her mouth. Her fingers amputated, the medical examiner was guessing with something like a pair of bolt cutters. They would also match some of the other blunt injuries. All occurring before her death, which had been caused by a garrote. Nearly ever remaining bone in her body had been broken at least once. PID had wreaked havoc on her reproductive system, but her pelvic cradle showed signs of having given birth at least once. Other tissue damaged pointed to her being a long time sex worker, and they were not guessing willingly. The medical examiner had taken custody of her body when no one had claimed it, cherished her Mary Doe and paid for her burial. That was probably the first kindness anyone had showed her in years.

Piece by piece, Roger tore the reports into quarters, then angrily into quarters again and dropped them into the still burning pieces of the envelope, and removed the last thing from the file folder - a film, with a DNA pattern on it. He'd seen them often enough in his brother's hands to know what they were. He clipped that to the wire and started ripping up the folder. He couldn't help the poor woman he'd read about, and that helplessness infuriated him. The coffee was forgotten.

Plowing on, he opened the second file. There were two pictures, one stacked on the other. one an old Polaroid, one a looked new. The face looked familiar - a little boy, about three Roger guessed. Dirty face, Roger would have guessed with food. A worn out shirt, bordering on too small, it was stretching up over that rounded potbelly most toddlers had, it had probably been white at one point, but it was dingy now. Clean-ish, as much as a shirt on a small boy would be, but needed to be run through the washer with bleach. It looked like Ninja Turtles on the front. Pajama pants, the same dingy white with faded cartoon characters. Worn out sneakers on the boy’s feet.Blond hair in need of a trim. Blue eyes. He couldn't place the face, but he felt like he should. For reasons he couldn't place, Roger carefully pulled it loose and stuck it in his jacket pocket. Then he looked back at the other picture - and in shock, fumbled, nearly dropping it. A boy looked back at him. Plain white tee shirt. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Round cheeks. Bare cinderblock wall behind him, with a height growth tape stuck to the wall behind it. Roger had seen a similar one on the wall at his sons' pediatrician's office. He flipped it over.

>   
>  John Young  
>  August, 1995  
> 

An updated photograph for a case worker's file. He'd seen this picture, many times. He'd read all of John's file, or so he believed, many times. He clipped the picture to the line, and one by one fed the papers - folded, not torn, into the fire, skimming each on to make sure he'd read it before destroying it. They ran from his 'discharge' to Ultra custody to back as fair as Roger had seen - placement with a foster home. The last report was one he hadn't seen before, the last report in the file. The oldest report. He clipped the file folder back to the line and skimmed the report, then read it in depth, then skimmed it again.

Settled back to digest it, eyes closed as he recalled the words and put them together. August 28th, 1988. An older woman, Birdie Hillsdale, grandmother to six, was driving the local school bus, like she'd done every school year since her youngest had started school. At the last stop in the district, one of the kids had called into the bus "Birdie! There's a baby here, I think he's lost!". She immediately gotten out of her seat and rushed as much as her arthritic knees allowed down the steps. She'd figured one of the preschoolers had wandered out of their yard. Instead she found a little boy she'd never seen before, sitting on the ground on a paper grocery bag by the school bus sign. There was an empty baby bottle by his leg - she'd sniffed it and said it smelled like apple juice - and an empty box of animal crackers that he'd been playing with. There crumbs on his shirt and what looked like some dried oatmeal on one sleeve. He clutched a toddler cup in one fist. It also smelled like apple juice, and was almost empty. His face was and hands were getting pink from the sun and she'd picked him up. He hadn't fussed but had put his arms around her neck and snuggled. She'd asked him what his name was - he had said "John". She'd asked him if he was hungry. He said yes. She had him where his mother was and he'd said "Momma went there" and pointed to the gas station two blocks down. Birdie always carried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in her lunchbox, in case one of the children on her route wanted an afterschool snack. She fed him one and refilled his cup with some of her bottled water. It was then she realized he was wearing a diaper. Birdie had held the boy carefully on her lap and driven to the police station. The Polaroid had been taken before the social worker had gotten there.

He'd been taken to the hospital, where they had found him in general good shape, except for some starting diaper rash and the beginnings of tooth decay. Baby Bottle Decay and lack of oral care. Written on his back in black marker - something permanent, as it didn't wash off - was

>   
> John Young  
> Libra, 1985  
> 

The word 'Libra' was dotted with a heart, and the handwriting looked cramped. The ink looked fresh.

Roger's hands where shacking, and he clutched the papers to his chest. They had guessed John had been abandoned, probably young. The oldest reports from foster care had stated he was behind on social skills and language development, hadn't been potty trained, and was frequently clingy and then distant. 

God, he hadn't even been _three_. Roger sat on the report and pulled the last thing from the folder - also a DNA film. He clipped it to the first and started ripping the folder into pieces, mostly just trying to calm himself down. He wanted to go to Jed and demand to know how long his brother had had that police report. Piece by piece he dropped the folder into the flames. John hadn't seen it, of that he was sure. Jed wanted him to destroy it. Roger was having second thoughts. Didn't John have a right to it? The wind caught the films and Roger reached over to move them to a different clip when he realized one column lined up. He snatched it free and held it up.

**Fifty percent** lined up. John was seventeen. The woman had been guessed to be between twenty-nine and thirty-three. Old enough, barely, to be his mother. I dotted with a heart, the way a teenage girl might. Roger's stomach lurched. He looked at the films again. Willed them to be different. They were not. He pulled out the papers and looked at them. Tried to imagine anything but pain coming from John seeing them. He shoved them both into the fire. The picture of the woman. The picture from John's social worker. 

The Polaroid he kept inside his jacket. 

Better to not share this information. Let John's parentage remain a phantom. The truth would hurt more.

Instead, Roger left the rooftop - fire still burning - to go pick up a pizza. No teenager would refuse pizza. And he and Jed wouldn't feel like cooking. Pizza for dinner. Roger sleeping on Jed's couch. Just another night. Everything was normal. 

He was being selfish, he knew. But soon, soon he wouldn't have a normal anymore. He'd left two sons behind. Soon he'd leave a third. Roger needed normal. And John deserved normal. Even if it was just a normal built on lies and manipulation. 

This lie was better than the truth.


End file.
